A Special Thank You
As we celebrate the 20th Anniversary of Northwest Pets this Fall, we’d like to take a moment to reflect for a minute on how we got here!
In the early 2000’s, my wife Angie and I were building our young(er) lives together with our Bernese Mountain Dogs Willow and Teddy. We held their birthday parties, took them to local and national dog club events, entered them in dog shows, and walked them all over town - they were truly our first two furry kids quite a while before that was fashionable to say! While the dogs didn’t share a lot of traits with regard to personality (Willow was 100% crazy for the first three years of her life, while Teddy was born an absolutely lovable and charming goof), they both had a real physical aversion to the “high quality” food we were feeding. After several years dealing with their terrible and expensive skin issues like hot spots and chronic ear infections, we finally found a much better brand of dry food did exist that fixed things, but we couldn’t buy it in a “regular” pet store. We also had to make our own raw dog food because it wasn’t commercially available, with food processing sessions that would last for hours and leave the kitchen a minor wreck!
So given our sincere investment in our pets well-being, when we thought about leaving big corporate life and moving back to Angie’s home in Idaho, we strapped on some pet business shaped “parachutes” after a few years of thoughtful planning - while actively questioning everything more times than we could count! In the space of a few months, we had our first human child, quit our jobs, packed up and moved, and opened up the first Northwest Pets store in Eagle, Idaho in September 2005. We had a pretty clear and simple vision - offer a better selection of dog and cat products, in a welcoming environment, staffed by a passionate team of knowledgeable and helpful folks that love pets just as much as you do!
In those opening days, we might be simultaneously trying to figure out the right new products to stock on our half-empty shelves, doing orders, cleaning the dog wash, answering the phone, ringing up customers at the register with a baby strapped to us, or herding Willow and/or Teddy around the sales floor - our amazing greeters that happily worked just for treats! It was like “drinking from the fire hose” and literally nuts most of the time for years to come, but we did get to meet cute puppies every day and the occasional adventurous cat that made it all worth it!
We met lots of new friends of both the two and four-legged variety in the store, held our first fun events like our Halloween Pet Costume Contest and Pet Friendly Magazine Cover Contest, and sponsored and attended community events like See Spot Walk, all the while trying to keep things under control both at work and at home as human baby number two arrived. It’s been a crazy 20 years in many ways - shared with our five Berners Willow, Teddy, Quincy, Phoebe, and Juneau - and a lot of hard work to get where we are today, but it’s been a less likely path that we would undoubtedly take again if we had the benefit of time travel and got to go all the way back to the beginning.
Most importantly, we’d like to thank all of our wonderful past and current customers - many of whom have been with us for nearly this entire journey! We know we wouldn’t have made it to this point without your support. And we also can’t thank our wonderful team members enough - who have given their heart and soul over the years to help fulfill your pets’ needs, and thereby enable Northwest Pets to grow to three stores plus a new Woof Waggin’ dog ice cream truck to dish out some great treats at local events around the Treasure Valley!
In closing, life always has both great experiences and challenges to offer in equal measure, and we don’t know exactly what tomorrow may bring. But what is certain is that both the joyful and the hard times we experience are better when we get to share them with our beloved pets. Thank you all for being a part of this crazy and rewarding journey and making both plans and dreams come true!
Sincerely,
Del, Angie &
The Northwest Pets Team
